L&M Small Craft Coastal Explorations: Everglades Challenge 2016: Check-in Day and Day 1

Everglades Challenge 2016

The Everglades Challenge is a roughly 300 mile expedition-style race for human and/or wind powered small craft starting on Fort Desoto beach, on the north side of Tampa Bay, and finishing in Key Largo. We did the event in 2014, so we enjoyed a little more confidence and less anxiety ahead of this year's event. The beach was all a buzz, however, with talk of the existing favorable winds transitioning to fearsome headwinds within a couple days of the start.

Challengers have 8 days to complete the course. A defining feature of the event is the requirement that all boats must be launched from above the high tide mark at Fort Desoto. This both limits the size of the vessels and creates a fantastic spectacle for small craft enthusiasts as boats line up for check-in, boat inspection, roll call, and, ultimately, a dramatic dawn start.

Check-in Day
Friday March 4

We tossed gear into the boat and wheeled it to the beach on the portage cart. We picked a spot next to IronBob and TheJuice, reasoning that they would have selected the perfect and most strategic location on the beach. They are seasoned Watertribe veterans who set themselves apart from the crowd each year with mind boggling speed and tactical skill. Additional Kruger Canoes filled in, including RidgeRunner, MicroTom, and SandyBottom in Dreamcatchers, and Beav and BlueJay in Sea Winds.

RidgeRunner was our competition in Class 3 along with Pubah

I talked to Druce Finlay, "The Juice", who related a sobering statistic. Out of six Everglades Challenges, on three out of six Florida Bay crossings it took them more than 24 hours to get across due to stiff headwinds. It is 34 miles from Flamingo to Key Largo, they cruise around 5 mph in good conditions, and they are racing to be the first paddle craft to finish, so for it to take these extremely motivated and strong paddlers more than 24 hours to go 34 miles is an indicator of very challenging conditions. A portent of things to come...

CWolfe was packing for the Ultimate Florida Challenge. He pulled out a giant bag of atomic fireball candies and offered us some. They help him stay awake at night.

Tatonka was preparing his Neptune 16, a nearly identical boat to our Gloucester 16, Sorcerer

He had boat rollers and a big pryin' stick to get this 1000 lb boat off the beach.

We chatted with AlexO about our windy crossing of Florida Bay in 2014. It was a south wind then, so we were able to sail the entire way, but the powerful wind on the open bay was intimidating even so. We already saw in the forecast that we were likely to have a 15-25 mph headwind on Florida Bay. Alex had dealt with this situation many times before, "Some people are afraid of the wind, I am not."

JoeWildlife prepped his Clipper Sea canoe

SandyBottom's Sea Wind was sporting a new paint job by here son Alan, shiny white topsides and gray bottom paint.

Alan, "SOS", was trying to find time to prep his beautiful new sailing canoe for the Ultimate Florida Challenge amidst a crowd of inquisitive onlookers. He designed and built this boat for the challenge.
http://sailnaway.blogspot.com/p/b-expedition-canoe.html

The north wind was blowing in the afternoon, so we launched for a shake-down sail. Boats were all lined up on the beach as we sailed back and forth on a fast beam reach. We wished we could just start heading south, already knowing that the north wind would not last.

Brain, "the Cap'n" was there to volunteer at checkpoints and offer real-time coverage of the event for the Kruger Canoes blog.

Day 1
Saturday, March 5

We packed up our tent in the pre-dawn hours. Lauren packed the canoe while Brian shuttled me and SandyBottom from the long term parking lot back to the beach. In the dark car ride we pondered the adventures to come; you never know what might happen. I jogged to the beach half way though roll call. Good thing WindwardMark is near the end of the alphabet. My parents were at the boat to send us off.

The Cap'n managed to corral most of the Krugerheads together for a group shot.

After the event cancellation last year, there were some additional precautions at the start. Chief would hold off the start until traffic was clear in the shipping channel, and there were two Watertribe safety boats to aid anyone who happened to capsize in the shipping channel. After that, we were on our own as usual.

The airhorn sounded on time. We shoved off and paddled across the sandbar in a few inches of water.

Thanks to my parents for this video:

Beav was off to our left in his Sea Wind as the sun rose over the bay.

It was a pleasant and uneventful crossing with a light tailwind and a light chop. The waves were a little bigger in a few spots where the incoming tide went against the wind.

We were actually with IronBob and TheJuice as we passed under the first bridge, which meant we were doing well. Of course they disappeared directly by means of some sort of sea-breeze ninja move, and would not be seen again until Key Largo.

A Coast Guard boat was cruising directly for us in the shallows outside of the ICW channel. We wondered what they had in mind, but they just cruised past and we exchanged friendly waves.

We had a nice chat with PenguinMan on the approach to Sarasota Bay. He is an engineer for Hobie who uses the EC to test and refine equipment for the Adventure Island and Tandem Island boats. He was making good use of his spinnaker; he tested a prototype last year and was using the new production model.

Sarasota Bay can be very challenging when the afternoon sea breeze picks up, but we enjoyed good conditions with a light beam reach at the start, then calm paddling later.

We passed through two regattas outside the Sarasota Sailing Squadron at the south end of the bay.

There was a lot of traffic as we paddled down the ICW in the heat of the afternoon.

We lowered our sail to pass under the low bridge at Blackburn Bay. The Cap'n texted us to say that our spot wasn't working. It turned out to be a problem with the Watertribe tracking site, which they partially fixed, but we found out later that people who were following the race using the selection "Show Only Current Waypoints" saw our icon stuck in the middle of Tampa Bay, but it was possible to see our track if only our track was selected.

At Venice Inlet, friendly voices cheered us on.

Photo by Patrick Edward McCarthy

We paddled through the Venice Canal, and endured the boat traffic, then had a nice run down Lemon Bay.

PenguinMan slowly gained on us and overtook us, flying his spinnaker.

As PenguinMan overtook us, we decided to start paddling to see if we could catch him. It was fun to watch my new ama nose cones working through the waves.

Wind and waves increased as we approached the south end of the bay, this is where we hit our maximum speed of the course 9.4 mph.

We started surfing. The bow submarined into the back of a wave and was underwater up to the coaming. We decided to slow down. Penguin man gave us the slip.

We learned later that RidgeRunner enjoyed the fast sailing on Lemon Bay a little too much. He snapped off his aka and immediately capsized. Being an experienced water man, he was able to self rescue and proceeded to Checkpoint 1, although he retired from the race there. He had just returned from a camping trip in the Everglades, and said something about camping being more fun than racing.

After Lemon Bay, we saw the sailors coming in from the outside route through Stump Pass. We knew we were closing in on Checkpoint 1, and it was still daylight! The first 60 miles was in the bag.

At Checkpoint 1, the Cap'n told us the scuttlebutt was that people were taking advantage of good conditions and pushing on as far as Picnic Island. We knew we needed to take advantage of good conditions before the headwinds kicked in, but with north winds forecast for the first 48 hours, we would also need to sleep before then.

We decided to modify our original plan of stopping at Hoagen Key, but we would not be able to reach Picnic Island before 3 am at the earliest. We wanted to maintain a respectable sleep schedule and sleep four hours each night between midnight and dawn. We decided to cut through Bull Bay, cross Charlotte Harbor, and try a potential campsite for which I had a waypoint on Bookelia Island at the north end of Pine Island.

If we had gone to Hoagen Key, we would have found the windsurfers BermudaBoy and SeaDogRocket partying with some locals, a tale told in this account, but our fate took us elsewhere...

Charlotte Harbor was a six mile crossing, but conditions looked good with a light tail wind.

It was a beautiful night on Charlotte Harbor with bright stars overhead. There can be traffic here during the day, but we only saw one powerboat in the distance.

Wind and waves increased near the end of the crossing as the fetch opened up behind us to the north. We sailed in to the unknown shoreline through some shoals. Wind and waves pressed on a thin line of sand, too narrow to accommodate a tent, and exposed to the wind. We circled around the back side of the point. The mangroves went all the way down to the water here. Our only hope was if someone had cleared a path into the mangroves. We searched with the light. A lucky break! There was a path in, and some old tiki torches indicated that this place had been used as a camp. It was perfect; a small clearing in the mangroves sheltered from the now increasing wind.

We covered 77 miles on the first day, which was a great start! Even though we had good conditions and the sail was helping us out for much of the day, 16 hours on the water is a good long day and more strenuous than the average day in the office clicking the mouse. We were ready for bed.